| How Can You Get Results Without Authority? |
|
How can you win friends and influence people who don't work for you? If you're dealing with teams, bosses, colleagues and staff, communicating for results can make or break your career. What is the secret to leading even when you aren't in a leadership position? The three must-have ingredients are personal power, ability to persuade and skill in negotiating. There's a lot of focus these days on personal power and what's often called 'leadership presence." This should be reassuring. It means that you don't have to be born with a genetic predisposition for leadership. It's learnable. After all, how are leaders, CEO's and presidents made? Through practice, training, coaching and more practice! In most work environments, whether corporate teams or non-profit task forces, you need to practice these skills daily. Each time you practice, you'll gain confidence and improve your skills of personal influencing, persuasiveness and negotiation. And come to think of it, this isn't only useful at work! You can use these skills when you need to convince another person or group of people to buy a concept, accept a solution or take action to complete a project. Let's examine a few situations where you can put these skills to work:
The list goes on and on. In each of these situations you'll want to hold your own authority and facilitate understanding. It's a lot like juggling. You need to have all these balls in the air at once: show credibility, demonstrate confidence, influence others and negotiate for results. As you gain skill in navigating process, you'll find that it really doesn't matter what your title is. What matters is that you understand your personal strengths and use them to positively influence the situation. This is where you can truly grow your skill as a facilitative leader. And here's the big hint for success: a storyboard. Use a storyboard to map out your personal power position. What can you bring to this situation that no one else can? What are your unique traits, talent and expertise? Get it out of your head and onto a map. If you can't think this through on your own, ask for help from a coworker. A storyboard helps you translate your key strengths into action. Next, use a storyboard to explore the situation. Make a map to discover different perspectives of your co-workers or task-force members. Explore their needs and perspectives. Use what you've just discovered to prepare solutions and map out conversations. It isn't about the picture or artistic beauty of your diagram. When you make a storyboard and explore issues together, you're sending a new message. You're saying, "I want to hear your ideas. Let's build this success together." Your willingness to manage the process helps you achieve results. Once you do this, you'll also grow your reputation in your organization. Finally, use a storyboard to map out any potential conflicts or issues. Keep a results-orientation. The storyboard is useful to manage the process…but it also is a valuable record for conversations and decisions. Don't just use it once. Use it repeatedly to get better results and stay on track. And here's one more hint: you don't have to be an expert.You can get results without authority. And without being a communication expert. The more you jump into situations and map out discussions, the more people will respect your input. You'll find that you will not only get results on your project…You'll get results in growing your career. The fastest way to understand your own thinking is to make a map. The easiest way to discover what's going on between people is to make a storyboard. And the best way to engage people grow better relationships is --yes; you got it, to make a visual map of all the elements of your situation. |
Search Site:
| Privacy | Press | Monthly Drawing | Contact | Terms of service | © 2005 - 2008 Copyright | Site Map |
